This invention relates to a trim member for a vehicle such as a motorcar, and particularly to the trim member having a function to mitigate a shock.
Generally, a body of a motorcar is formed by basic frame members of closed sections such as front pillars A, center pillars B, rear pillars C and roof side rails D as shown in FIG. 1, and inside of the basic frame member facing to the car-room is covered with a trim member called a garnish. Hitherto, a main object of the trim member was to cover uneven portions of the basic frame member for ornament, therefore the trim member had a rib arrangement structure giving the trim member a rigidity barely sufficient for keeping its own shape, and had no sufficient function to absorb and mitigate a shock applied to the member.
Recently, such a trim member also has been required to have a shock energy absorbing function and a shock absorptive trim member for a motorcar is proposed by Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. Hei 7-2029 or No. Hei 7-2030 for example.
The shock absorptive trim member is made of a formed hollow article of plastic and has a top face portion positioned at a car-room side for receiving a shock, first and second outer wall face portions formed on both sides of the top face portion, first and second inner wall portions formed on an inner side of the top face portion, a first bottom face portion formed between the first outer wall face portion and the first inner wall face portion, and a second bottom face portion formed between the second outer wall face portion and the second inner wall face portion. The first and second bottom face portions are positioned at a car-body side to be fixed to the car-body.
However, since the shock absorptive trim member has a complicated hollow shape in which various wall face portions are arranged between the top face portion and the bottom face portion, its forming work is troublesome and dimensional accuracies of the wall faces are apt to be unstable to influence the shock absorbing performance.